Martine LeDuc is the director of PR for the mayor’s office in Montreal. When four women are found brutally murdered and shockingly posed on park benches throughout the city over several months, Martine’s boss fears a PR disaster for the still busy tourist season, and Martine is now also tasked with acting as liaison between the mayor and the police department. The women were of varying ages, backgrounds and bodytypes and seemed to have nothing in common. Yet the macabre presentation of their bodies hints at a connection. Martine is paired with a young detective, Julian Fletcher, and together they dig deep into the city’s and the country’s past, only to uncover a dark secret dating back to the 1950s, when orphanages in Montreal and elsewhere were converted to asylums in order to gain more funding. The children were subjected to horrific experiments such as lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and psychotropic medication, and many of them died in the process. The survivors were supposedly compensated for their trauma by the government and the cases seem to have been settled. So who is bearing a grudge now, and why did these four women have to die?

Not until Martine finds herself imprisoned in the terrifying steam tunnels underneath the old asylum does she put the pieces together. And it is almost too late for her…in Jeannette de Beauvoir’s Asylum.

Review

OH MY GOSH WHAT A BOOK!!!

I love a book the keeps me researching as I am reading!

This story opened my eyes to the plight of the Duplessis orphans. These are orphans who were in orphanages one day and woke up in asylums the next day. Canadian social services and the Catholic Church were responsible for the orphans at the time. The reason for the reclassification, of course, was money. These orphans suffered tremendous abuse. You can read more about this here. Some of the abuse was from the good ole CIA. Yes…in Canada. This was at the height of the Cold War. The CIA was testing mind control drugs on these orphans. The project was called Project MKUltra. You can read more about it here.

Although this novel covers the orphans’ plight, it keeps you in the edge of your seat wondering who the murderer is and who will be killed next. I confess…I know very little about Canada. How the government works and general knowledge about the country and history are not in my repoitoire. This book expanded my knowledge in many areas. It kept me turning pages and gasping for breath on almost every page!!